Cook County Hospital, which opened in 1857, was used as a teaching hospital by
Rush Medical School until the
American Civil War, when it was transitioned to an
army hospital. After the war, it continued its purpose as a center for medical education and founded the first medical internship in the country in 1866. By the 1900s, the hospital was overseen by surgeons and physicians in Chicago who volunteered their services at the hospital, which was rebuilt in 1916. Regarded as one of the world's-greatest teaching hospitals, many interns, residents, and graduate physicians came to see the medical and surgical advances. Innovations included the world's first
blood bank and surgical fixation of fractures. In the 1930s, Dr.
Bernard Fantus, after finding ways to lengthen the preservation of blood outside the body, invented and opened the world's first
blood bank, the Cook County Hospital Blood Bank. In 1986,
Agnes D. Lattimer was appointed medical director of Cook County Hospital, making her the first black woman to serve as medical director of a major American hospital. Cook County Hospital was renamed for
John H. Stroger Jr., the then-president of the Cook County Board, in 2001. and is housed in a facility located adjacent to the old hospital building. The former Cook County Hospital building was renovated and reopened as a privately funded mixed-use development, and
Hyatt Hotel. ==In popular culture==